Numbers Show From Deflategate to Concussions, The NFL Is Teflon-Coated

Scan through the Financial section on any given day and there will be stories highlighting how poor decisions are affecting businesses. Countless hours will be spent in boardrooms working to turn these decisions around and redirect public opinion. Millions of dollars are lost daily and measures are taken to avoid PR nightmares that can influence customers purchasing products and services.

Ultimately, that environment is healthy. Good business practices are rewarded and poor ones are devalued which places focus on delivering a good product.

Except, it seems, for the National Football League.

The NFL seems to be a Teflon-coated organization for which poor leadership decisions create a negative view of its brand, yet an insatiable appetite for the game fuels massive television viewership. If the NFL were a publicly traded business that didn’t ply entertainment, it would be crashing on Wall St. Instead, its vexing state of leadership gaffes are oddly forgiven due to America’s incredible love for football.

This isn’t hyperbole. There’s numbers that show both sides to the NFL’s coin.

Social media technology provider Infegy has been reporting on overall brand popularity. Several of the major sports leagues occupy their Top 50 listing, including the NFL. Indeed, the NFL sees their brand being discussed most in August of all the leagues, moving from No. 12 to No. 9, while at the same time the NBA moved up from No. 13 to No. 12 and MLB has moved way up from No. 41 to No. 15.

But, in terms of whether there was positive or negative feelings about the league brands, it’s here where the National Football League falters. The NFL received 66% positivity, 6% mixed and 29% negative. The NBA received 70% positivity, 5% mixed and 25% negative. And MLB received 72% positive, 4% mixed and 24% negative. Out of the most talked about topics surrounding the NFL, the topic that received the least amount of positivity sentiment was Deflategate, garnering only 27% positivity out of 125,200 posts.

And it’s not just overall brand that will take a hit based on Deflategate (and if one goes back further, Spygate, Bountygate, plus the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson domestic abuse cases), the matter of head and neck injuries are about to get a Hollywood treatment.

And always simmering in the background is the name of the league’s Washington franchise, which is seen by many as racist, yet has their owner and Commissioner Goodell backing it.

Any other business would be gasping for air after these kind of repeated hits. And yet, while still early in the season, there are signs that the game’s popularity may never be higher.

CBS and NFL Network’s season debut broadcast of Thursday Night Football on Thursday, Sept. 17 featuring Denver-Kansas City was the most-watched and highest-rated TNF broadcast ever (Nielsen Live + Same Day fast national ratings). That game was seen by an average of 21.117 million viewers, +2% from last year’s 20.777 million, and earned an average national household rating/share of 12.9/24, +2% from last year’s 12.7/22 for the comparable premiere broadcast on CBS and NFL Network (Pittsburgh-Baltimore; 9/11/14). To place that in perspective, Game 7 of last year’s World Series pulled in a 3.7/23 rating with 23.5 million viewers. Read that again. The NFL’s Thursday Night Football debut was just over 2.4 million less than baseball’s most exciting postseason game they can offer, a Game 7.

The eye-popping viewership numbers have advertisers, not running away from the NFL, they’re flocking to them even while ad prices during games on the networks that host them continue to soar. According to a recent story by Ad Age, a 30-second spot in NBC's "Sunday Night Football" is running at $665,375 per unit, with late scatter buys from the likes of movie studios and telco brands pacing well over the $700,000 mark. Last year, the average cost for a 30-second commercial in "Sunday Night Football" was a little over $625,000.

All of this makes one wonder whether the NFL is being rewarded for poor behavior. But in reality, it’s a sign that when the executives get out of the way, the players playing the game continues to be the most popular sport in North America, and it’s not even close.

The lingering question remains, can the NFL continue to be embroiled in controversy off the field and yet still not ultimately affect the league’s bottom line? The answer in the near-term seems to be, no. But, lurking further out, the NFL could see substantial storm clouds.

If Goodell and the owners dig in and refuse to approach anything close to détente in this cold war with the players, when the current labor agreement expires in 2020, we could get a work stoppage more damaging than the last.

Fans were upset when the owners locked out the players from March 12, 2011, to July 25, 2011 before reaching their current labor deal. But that was the off-season, where only the pre-season Hall of Fame Game between the Chicago Bears and St. Louis Rams was cancelled. If relations don’t improve dramatically, the idea of a work stoppage that cuts into not only pre-season, but regular season games becomes more and more of reality. It’s here where he NFL would be truly damaged not only with the loss of revenue, but sagging brand value that might influence advertisers and sponsorship deals.

So while the NFL is currently the Teflon-coated Shield, there’s nothing to say that all the bad PR occurring off the field now sets the table for a vastly larger PR problem in the future. There’s five years in which to ultimately make the determination as to whether the NFL gets better or worse in how it handles off-the-field matters. For the fans, and the NFL’s bottom line, they’ll need to work on improving matters.

CHICAGO, IL - SEPTEMBER 13: Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the NFL, stands on the field prior to the game between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field on September 13, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)